


and after all this time to find we're just like all the rest

by irnan



Series: on a thin chain of moments and something like faith [6]
Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Red Hood: Lost Days
Genre: Families of Choice, Family, Fluff and Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-05
Updated: 2013-10-05
Packaged: 2017-12-28 12:46:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/992164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnan/pseuds/irnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After all that worrying, it's not Jason fighting with <i>Bruce</i> that destabilises the armistice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and after all this time to find we're just like all the rest

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Springsteen. It's... I don't know if it's the actual last thing I will write for this series, but as I was writing it I realised it was _an_ ending, at least. 
> 
> Warning for implied child abuse and self-harm.

“I’m not fixing this,” said Tim. “It’s none of my business. If he doesn’t want to talk –“

“It’s not about _want_ ,” Tam shouted. “It’s about need and business and being a grown-up. He needs to haul his ass over here to sign off on the contractor submissions and the applications for the legal services office, he’s your brother, go over there and sort it out.”

“There’s nothing to sort out,” Tim said flatly. He hadn’t looked up from his computer screen. Tam waited for nearly a full minute, but nothing further was forthcoming.

“That’s _it_?! After all this time, after everything, after you spent all last Friday evening talking about him and how great it was that you finally had a relationship with your big brother, that’s it?”

Tim’s mouth tightened. Tam had come over expecting to have to fight Red Robin tooth and nail for even the smallest hint of emotion about this, but Red Robin wasn’t in the house, apparently. Tim Drake was, and he was sulking like the teenager he was and probably trying not to cry.

In three days’ time, when she was less angry about this, she’d think it was adorable.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s it. Look, I’m not responsible for what Jason thinks or does or who he fights with, OK, and if he wants to go around tarring us all with the same brush over something one of us said to him at a point when he was the one being the raging jackass –“

“According to Steph,” said Tam.

“What!” said Tim.

“Jason being the raging jackass is according to Steph.”

“You think _Steph_ was being the raging jackass?” Tim asked confusedly.

“I think they’ve both got raging tempers and I’m glad I wasn’t the neighbourhood when they had whatever fight they had,” said Tam evasively.

“You think Steph was the one being the raging jackass.”

“Well, maybe kind of a little?”

“You don’t like Steph?”

“I love Steph!”

“But you don’t like her!”

“I like her just fine! I just – listen.” Tam groaned. “Telling someone – I don’t know exactly what happened to Jason, but I know it was really bad, OK, and telling someone they need to _get over it_ is a jerkass move, OK?”

“ _KILLING PEOPLE_ IS A JERKASS MOVE,” Tim bellowed.

“Jason kills people,” Tam scoffed. “Jason who buys _coffee_ for all our contractors and opens doors for me and calls me Miss Fox and charmed the actual pants off of that actual fire-breathing woman Sharpe from the building committee and knows everyone on site by name and asks after all their kids and oh yes, is pouring thousands of dollars into an enormous ambitious scheme designed to improve the lives of every single human being in uptown Gotham and beyond. _That_ Jason _kills_ people. Pull the other one, Timothy, it has bells on it, OK?”

“Oh my God,” said Tim, “is he mind-controlling you?”

Tam whacked him with a cushion and stormed out.

*********

“He kills people,” said Tim to Cass.

“No he doesn’t,” she said. “Not in… present tense.”

“Come on!”

“No deaths linked to the Red Hood in eight… nearly nine months,” said Cass.

“He’s good enough to be hiding it!”

She gave him a doubtful sideways look. “From Bruce. But from Babs and Dick?”

Tim considered that. Bruce was… if any of them could hope to get away with hiding shit from Bruce, it was Jason: there was always a conclusion Bruce was willing to jump to where Jason was concerned, and Jason knew exactly how to set up the very conclusions that he _wanted_ Bruce to jump to. Babs and Dick were different: all these months since this détente had begun they had never been anything less than honest with Jason. Tim understood his brother well enough by now to know that that created a kind of obligation in Jay’s mind, a debt of sorts to be repaid by honesty and fair dealing on his own part.

Tim had thought that had stretched to all of them, but he was apparently wrong.            

“Well,” he said. Suddenly he didn’t know what to do with his hands: he put them in his pockets, drew them out, fiddled with the zipper of his leather jacket. Jason had one just like it. The jacket, not the zipper. Though Tim supposed the zipper…

Great, now his _thoughts_ were babbling.

Cass crossed her arms over her chest. She didn’t move otherwise, but from Cass, that was enough.

“You really think he’s just stopped?”

She glared at him.

Tim rolled his eyes. “Not like that. But Jason kills because he thinks it’s the _right thing to do_ , Cass.”

“I know.” She looked away. There was an awful twist to her mouth, just painful. “It’s been… a couple weeks. Not long enough to matter, right?”

Tim sighed. “It’d be easier if we believed that, wouldn’t it?”

*********

“Has anyone actually told you what happened?” asked Babs, propped up on her elbows so she could see his face. “Cause no one’s actually been able to coherently explain to me what happened.”

“You must be joking,” said Dick. “No one in this town tells me anything. I’m Batman. I’m supposed to read everyone’s minds and know in advance what’s goin’ down.”

“Aaaaargh,” said Babs, and dropped her head back onto his chest. “It’s like herding cats.”

“Kindergarten,” said Dick gloomily. “Bat-kindergarten.”

“Let’s never have children of our own.”

He started laughing. “It’s not like we’re getting to give these ones back to their parents at the end of the day.”

“I hate everything.”

“Me too.”

“I mean, not everything everything.” She patted his chest fondly. “But mostly everything.”

“Tell you what.”

“Hmm.”

“Let’s just barricade ourselves in here and not get involved.”

“OK,” said Barbara. “I do _kind_ of like that suggestion.”

“There’s absolutely zero need to sound so surprised. I’m not _totally_ useless, you know.”

“Love, of course not. You’re Batman.”

*********

What had actually happened was this:

“For fuck’s sake,” said Jason, surprised into laughter. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

Steph looked up in surprise. “Course I do,” she said. They were sitting on the arm of a crane flung out across Amusement Mile; below them the once-bustling park was dead and dark, lit here and there by the lights on the fence, strategically placed to illuminate the keep out signs. But the view across the rest of the city was spectacular – and behind them Gotham County stretched up away from the river, lights glinting in windows and moving along the highways farther into the mainland. “What would be the point if I didn’t have some kind of hope for Gotham?”

“There’s never not a point to stopping people getting hurt,” said Jason. “But I mean, for God’s sake, Steph. Look around you. This city’s going to hell in a handbasket, and it is the way it is because people don’t change; most of us are monsters, that’s just the way it is.”

“That’s _bullshit_ ,” said Steph, and Jason didn’t know what he’d said wrong, but suddenly she was furious. “That’s total utter defeatist _bullshit_. I mean, what the hell are you doing with Tim, you know, working with the Foundation and setting up that whole housing community thing if you don’t believe that things can get better? Huh? Is it some kind of convoluted Bat-scheme where you knife him again in a couple of weeks?”

They both knew what the answer to that question was, but Jason was clenching his fists in his gloves and fighting back against the open pit that had opened in his stomach: Steph was putting her fist in wounds he hadn’t realised were even open, hadn’t realised even existed, and it – he –

He was not afraid. He couldn’t – Jason didn’t – you couldn’t let them see you were afraid. That was –

He bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood. Then he said, “Oh please. People are killed every day – people get raped and brutalised and used and tortured every day – by other people who don’t even think their victims are _human_. If anyone in this city knows that, it’s you and me. And does anyone stop them? Of course not. Because they have better things to think about. Grand overarching bullshit ideals like justice and hope.”

“Oh, fuck you!” said Steph. “You don’t get to do that, you don’t get to dismiss everyone in the whole world just cause –“

“Just cause I died that one time and no one gave a damn?”

“That is _not true_!” Steph yelled. “OK? That is _not fucking true_ , and you need to drag your stupid head outta your own ass and get over yourself, OK, cause this wallowing in your poor hurt feelings and your daddy doesn’t love me bullshit –“

“Wallowing!” Jason yelled back. “Hey, wake up and smell the roses, Steph, OK, they don’t care about us, all right? We are disposable dime-a-dozen bought on street corners –“

“That’s – you’re talking crap, as always, you’re talking utter crap – “

“Oh, forgive me, were all the files wrong, did I mistake something here, was Babs mentoring you before you died or something, cause the way I understood it you had to dress up as _someone else entirely_ to get her to pay you two dimes worth of attention!”

Steph went white. Even up here in the dark Jason could see it.

“It’s funny cause I thought that was a thing we had in common,” he added viciously. “You know, putting on the red and green ‘cause it’ll get Bruce to notice us, and then having _that_ backfire spectacularly.”

“Yeah, well,” said Steph. “Whatever was going on with me back then, at least now I have too much self-respect to flounce around town killing people in lieu of dealing with my fucking problems.”

“You’re not doing anything different,” said Jason derisively. “You’re just doing it for someone who’s slightly less of an asshole.”

“And you?” said Steph. “You’re never gonna do anything, are you? You’re gonna stamp around this town killing people, talking crap and killing people and taking the law and morality and – and everything else into your own hands just like Bruce always does, right until some cop puts a bullet in you and this time _none of us will mourn you_.”

“ _Someone_ needs to be the man he’s too much of a coward to be,” Jason snarled.

“You know, you’re right about that much,” said Steph. “But, well, newsflash, that person’s already wearing the damn cowl. Bruce might be too much of a coward to be Dick, but he’s not enough of a coward to be you.”

She’d dropped off the crane into darkness before Jason could answer.

*********

Jason loved his apartment – it was small, and surprisingly cluttered, and had roof access and big windows – so he very carefully didn’t go home for three days: he badly needed to trash something, and he didn’t want to wake up next week out of this rage and find he’d destroyed his most precious (only) possessions.

He trashed one of Bruce’s safehouses instead.

It didn’t make him feel better. Standing in the rubble of the living room, breathing hard, he found it just hadn’t helped. The rush of physical activity, the sense of triumph in destruction that he’d been waiting for hadn’t come at all; and now he understood that he hadn’t even really wanted to do it – it was just –

It had just been a _habit_.

And now he was standing in the middle of a ruined apartment like a two-year-old who’d destroyed his toys in a tantrum, feeling like a fool.

Jason sat down heavily on a couch cushion and stared at the kindling he’d made of one of the dining room chairs until the sun came up.

_And this time, none of us will mourn you._

*********

A week after that, drug dealers up by the Sprang Bridge: physical violence brought the usual adrenaline, the pounding rush and joy of _being this good_ , of having power and control and raw talent, of getting to use it in a way that was actually –

Jason staggered, breathing hard; someone was sobbing over their testicles Jason had kicked in, but other than that they were all unconscious, except:

“Please,” said the guy kneeling in front of him. Blood coated one side of his face, and he cradled one broken arm to his chest. “Please, please don’t, please –“

“You’re the scum who dealt to those kids over in North City Park,” Jason grated.

“Please don’t, please, please! I’ll do anything – please –“

It was only then that Jason realised he was holding a gun trained on the man’s head.

It wasn’t even his own. He didn’t know where the hell it had come from. He had – he had left his own guns at home.

A full-body shudder took him; a sudden rush of nausea.

_please don’t hurt me, please_. And later, once he had understood that begging made no difference, dull silence, desperately climbing so far back into his own head that he no longer even knew when it had stopped…

There was a blur of red and yellow standing in front of him. Jason shivered back into his skin and found his youngest brother between the muzzle of the gun and the dealer: Damian had pushed his hood back and was looking up at him with an expression that –

Jason dropped the gun. If he’d – if he’d pulled the trigger – Damian would be dead, brains probably splattered across the concrete. Damian hadn’t flinched. Damian had walked right into his line of fire and waited for Jason to notice him.

Jason took a step backwards. And another. Damian watched him in silence, an eleven year old assassin who’d seen more death, probably, than Jason ever had. The dealer too had subsided, shaking.

“It doesn’t work,” said Robin. “That’s the trouble, see.” He smiled bitterly. “If you think there’s a future, it stops working.”

“Your mother showed me all the future I need,” said Jason, but it sounded hollow even to his own ears.

“Yes,” said Robin. “That’s what I used to think.” He shrugged. “The others are much…”

“More ignorant?” said Jason. “More naïve?”

Robin glanced away. “Better,” he said. The streetlights were a few yards away, but his yellow cape glowed in the dim light. He looked back at Jason, mouth set in a firm line. “Better,” he repeated.

Jason shook his head. He wanted – he couldn’t –

He left without another word.

*********

Twice that night he called Talia; twice he hung up before she could answer. The walls of the apartment had stopped being small and cosy and hidden and safe, begun to be oppressive instead. Jason turned the kris knife over and over in his hands; once he set blade to the flesh of his inner arm, morbidly curious. Some of the kids he’d known growing up had cut themselves; he knew that many he protected as the Red Hood did. Did it really – what, work? He pressed down – but didn’t cut; courage gone after all.

He didn’t _want_ to experience more pain. Was he a coward, as Steph had accused him? Had he lost his nerve?

Had he ever had any at all? All this time, all this violence. He remembered the car, the bomb he’d put under Bruce’s car, moving in fractions of inches, his own heartbeat loud in his ears. The flat, bitter taste in his mouth that he’d _thought_ was hatred, all these years.

*********

Bruce didn’t give him a chance to hang up; he answered on the very first ring. Jason hadn’t expected that at all. Jason barely knew why he’d made the call in the first place.

“Jason? Jason, what’s wrong?”

Something was obviously wrong, because there was no other reason for Jason to call him.

“Nothing,” said Jason. “The others are fine.”

“I didn’t _ask_ about the _others_ ,” his father snapped. “I asked about _you_.”

Jason drew a sharp breath. Bruce fell silent. In the background there was a mutter of voices; someone said, _Mr Wayne_ –

“Forgive me,” said Bruce. “It’s my son.”

_Of course._

Silence again. Bruce had stepped out, somewhere, into a silent room or corridor. Jason… kept on breathing.

“Jay-lad.” Soft, low, worried. Bruce had talked like that whenever Jason had been sick or hurt as a boy; it conjured up the warmth of his room at the Manor and the smell of Alfred’s chicken soup.

“I have to go,” said Jason. “I – I gotta. I’ll talk to you later, OK?”

Hitch in Bruce’s breathing.

“I can – I’m back in Gotham next week,” he said. “We’ll meet. I want to see you.”

Jason said, “Yes.”

He couldn’t hang up; he knew Bruce would never, not as long as –

Count of ten. Count of ten.

Jason said, “I’ll see you.”

He hung up. He dropped his phone onto the bed, and went into the bathroom, and washed his face in cold water, which didn’t work. Finally he sat down on the toilet lid and let himself have it: he must have cried for nearly an hour.

Then he climbed into the shower and held his hot, aching face under the spray until his eyes had stopped hurting, stopped feeling puffy and swollen. He washed up slowly, examining scars on his way past, counting them up. The ones he didn’t remember receiving were almost all from the Joker, except one or two that he’d had from childhood.

Out of the shower, the bathroom mirror showed him a boy in his early twenties, shaggy-haired and scarred, with red-rimmed eyes and a thoughtful, intense look. It wasn’t a face you’d associate with someone who never believed anything but the worst of people.

Jason sighed. “You need a shave,” he told his reflection.

Bruce had taught him that, as well. He had always used a straight-razor – his father’s – and both his eldest sons had emulated him. Tim never had, Jason knew: he’d bunked at Tim and Cass’s place more than once, and had used their bathroom. Tim shaved with an electric razor, but the comb he used, and all his cufflinks, had been Jack Drake’s.

Dick wore his father’s watch, his leather jacket. Jason had nothing of Willis Todd’s, just as Cass had nothing of David Cain’s. He wondered if Steph had anything of her own father’s, but he doubted it.

Jason rubbed at his stubble. “Crunch time,” he said to the mirror again. “But.” He smiled sharply. “You already made your mind up, didn’t you? You already decided.” He sighed. “But you didn’t wanna admit it to yourself because you’re a stubborn ass, and you just had to win, even though you don’t actually know what winning would look like anymore.”

But that was a lie too. He knew exactly what winning would look like. Winning would be an apartment wrecked without reason, and yet more blood on his hands, and silence all around him, forever.

Winning, at this point, would mean nothing short of desolation.

*********

The next morning he went back to the safehouse he’d trashed.

Alfred was already there, righting the furniture, but there was a pile of broken chairs in the hall, and the kitchen was knee-deep in glass shards, and Jason would probably need to re-paint the dining room.

He sighed. “Brought a sixpack,” he said to Alfred, “if you wanted a beer.”

“Thank you, Master Jason,” Alfred said dryly. “I rarely indulge.”

Jason looked amused. “If you say so, Alfie,” he said, fishing out a broom and the vacuum cleaner.

“Your assistance is… appreciated but not required, Master Jason.”

“Oh well,” said Jason. “I was always taught it was rude not to clean up my own mess.”

“An excellent lesson,” Alfred admitted.

“My Mom was an excellent woman,” said Jason absently. He was too busy sweeping up shattered wine glasses to see Alfred smile.

“Who the hell but Bruce would even think wine glasses oughta be stocked in a safe house, anyway?” he added, more to himself than to Alfred, and flipped the radio on as he passed it; it was classic rock all day on GCR on Fridays. Alfred loathed punk, but if you were careful in your song choices you could get him to listen to the Stones all right, and Springsteen too.

*********

... _catching rides to the outskirts tying faith between our teeth_...

*********

When Tim got in to the offices at the renovation site at eight-thirty in the morning Jason was already there, signing the documents he’d been needing to sign for a week and dialling Sarah Wells – their architect – with the other hand.

He’d brought Tim coffee.

Tim threw himself into a chair opposite him and glowered until Jason took notice of him.

“Hey, Sarah,” he said, grinning at Tim. “It’s Peter. Yeah, I’ve been outta the loop – no, it was the flu, everything fine now. Thanks, thanks a lot. Yeah. No, Tim’s filled me in but could you come over and walk me through number… number 39 later on? I’m not getting the problem with the second elevator shaft. OK. Ahhhh, lunch is not great, I’m having lunch with my sister. No, other than that, whenever you’ve got a minute is fine. I’m here all day. You’re a saint, Sarah, thanks so much. You too!”

He hung up the phone. “S’up?”

“You tell me,” said Tim, glaring.

“Bit of this, bit of that.”

“Jay!”

“It’s none of your business, little brother, you’re nosy enough as it is.”

“Maybe if people told me stuff I wouldn’t have to be!”

“Maybe you gotta get over that habit of needing to know everything,” said Jason. “Look, just drink your coffee, OK? I didn’t go out of my way to stop at bellavista’s for it so you could make me talk about my feelings, it’s supposed to be a substitute for that.”

“I think that only actually works on the TV,” said Tim.

But he did drink the coffee.

*********

Cass knew a takeaway place that did great pasta; they each got a carton of penne with pesto and went to eat by the riverside, not far from Sprang Bridge. Jason couldn’t stop glancing at it.

“Remember what you said to me on my birthday?” he asked. _A way to be who I am, without being that_.

Ten months ago, that was. It seemed trite and cliché to claim it felt like ten years, but it had certainly been a damn long time.

“Of course,” Cass said. “We had a smoke.”

Jason laughed. “Yeah.”

“Hmm?”

She was watching him, plastic fork hovering, sunglasses slipped down her nose a little; there was a curl at the corners of her mouth that could only be called hopeful. It tore something apart in Jason’s chest.

_I wish you’d come home_.

He thought he might have a name for it now.

Jason took a deep breath. “Nothin’,” he said. “Hey, let’s do this again.”

Cass smiled. “I’d… like that very much,” she said.

*********

At first glance Steph didn’t even recognise him. The first time they’d met he’d been wearing an outfit that was so carefully casual it had just _screamed_ “secret agent undercover, coming through!” This was a lot better – Henley and jeans and sneakers instead of combat boots. And sunglasses. And he wasn’t as pale: Jason Todd had been getting him some sunlight exposure, which showed clearest of all in the burst of freckles across his nose. OK, but those were just adorable.

He hadn’t dyed the white streak out; it hung into his eyes with the rest of his shaggy hair. Boy needed a haircut. Or maybe not; Steph kinda liked it. It was… less regimented. Less like he was treating every aspect of himself as a weapon.

Wow, had she been spending too much time with Damian.

Anyway, casually dressed, and carrying a book, and on her front freaking porch.

She nearly dropped the plate she was supposed to be washing up.

Her Mom tilted her head back and looked up at him in surprise.

“Hi,” said Jason. “Mrs Brown? I’m Jason Todd.” He smiled at her. “Uh, can Steph come out to play?”

Steph started laughing. Jason grinned.

Mom said, “I…”

“Jason’s Tim’s older brother, Mom,” said Steph. “You’ve met Tim!”

“ _After_ you broke up,” said Mom. “Yes.” She removed the plate and the dishtowel from Steph’s hands with a firm jerk.

“Yeah,” said Steph. She looked at Jason. “I, uh – “

“Five minutes,” said Jason. “I promise.” He gestured with the book at the front ‘lawn’. It was… perhaps it was something in his body language, more than anything else, but…

He was only two years older than she was. She’d known that, technically.

“OK!” said Mom. “I’ll just – I’m in the kitchen, OK? OK.”

Steph blew her a kiss and got out on the porch and shut the door firmly on Mom’s curious look and said, said, “What is that, Ian Kershaw, what, you’re reading that for fun?”

“It’s the Second World War. What’s not interesting about the Second World War?”

“You’re reading that _for fun_.”

“I read other stuff for fun, too.”

“When do you find the time?”

“In between starting pointless fights with my friends and ignoring my family’s phone calls.”

Steph sighed. “Huh.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Listen,” she said. “I’m sorry. I had no right to tell you – not that I was wrong! I want that made clear from the start, ‘cause I wasn’t. Wrong, I mean. But I always hate it when people tell me to just get over shit, you know, like that happens with a snap of your fingers ‘cause everybody’s feelings come with an off-switch, right? Like, yes, no wonder nobody ever needs therapists, it’s _just that easy_. And it’s not my place to tell you what you’re allowed to have issues over and what not. Or… anything.”

“I had no right to talk to you like that,” said Jason. “I mean, especially not about Babs. Or… any of the rest of it, but _especially_ Babs. She adores you. I didn’t ever mean –“

“It’s OK,” said Steph, feeling herself go red.

“It’s not,” said Jason. “I went all Talia on you and it wasn’t fair.”

Steph smiled. “I thought you got along with Talia.”

“I do,” said Jason, sounding faintly surprised. “I count her a friend. Doesn’t mean I don’t know what she can be like.”

“Mmm,” said Steph. “I really am sorry.”

“It’s OK.” He smiled at her; he had a lopsided sort of smile, like it was out of practice. On a wild and possibly irrational impulse, Steph stepped up and hugged him.

She thought she felt him twitch in surprise: then he leaned into it and hugged her back. Jason Todd, as it turned out, gave good hugs: long and warm and firm. He really was stupidly tall; her face barely reached his shoulder.

“So,” she said.

“We OK?” he asked.

“That would indeed be the significance of the hug,” said Steph, mouth twitching. God, he was worse at this than Tim had been, poor baby.

“Ah. Uh.”

“Come on,” she said, taking pity – and a firm hold of his elbow, lest he try to run off or something. “Come on in. There will be ice cream in a few minutes.”

“Oh, no,” said Jason, sounding spooked. It was so very, very adorable. She had to text Cass right away and get her to come over. _Robin II in my kitchen being adorable at mother. Must come see. For science obvs. Call Kara stat_. “I don’t – that’s your Mom.”

“Normal human interaction will do you good,” she said firmly, hauling him inside. “Now this is suburbia, welcome, welcome. We call that a living room, and that’s a staircase, a little smaller than you’re used to…”

Jason said, “Seriously.”

“Shut up or nut up,” Steph said, pointing at the kitchen door. “Mooooooooooom! Jay’s staying for ice cream!”

“That’s nice, dear,” said Mom, sounding amused. “Does Jay even like ice cream?”

“Kind of a fondness for Neapolitan,” Jason admitted.

“Lucky break,” said Mom. “I think that’s the only kind we’ve got.”

Steph herded him into the kitchen, grinning, and went to grab her cell.

_Note to self,_ she thought as she typed _. When you get a moment, tease him about his freckles_.

*********

When Tam Fox opened her dorm room door on Tuesday morning someone had left her a bouquet of yellow roses and a note that read: _sorry for making you put up with that_.

She’d told Jason months ago that she liked the yellow ones best.

“ _Kills_ people,” she scoffed again. “They’re a mess, all of them. God.”

She stuck her face into the roses and inhaled the scent, smiling.

Then she snapped a pic of them with her phone and texted it to Tim with an accusatory remark about his inability to remember her favourite flowers, but hell if he couldn’t recite all of Conner Kent’s favourite _Wendy The Werewolf Stalker_ episodes off by heart.

He texted her back offering to come over with a hazmat suit. Tam laughed loud enough to wake up half the building.


End file.
